In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Daniel Glazman
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Henri Sivonen wrote:
> Wysiwyg editing. There is not a single html editor on the market using
> html as its internal format and able to do real wysiwyg editing.
Trying to use HTML+CSS as an encoding format for font properties applied
to text without structure is using HTML+CSS for a purpose they weren't
designed for.
I am not saying Editor shouldn't show the resulting page layout to the
author (although that rendering is What (S)He Sees Is (S)He Gets--not
What (S)He Sees Is What The Others Get). My comments/wishes are about
the available *and preferred* editing gestures in the Web page editor.
It seems to me that Editor is going into the direction where the user
would instruct the Editor like this: "Set the font of this string to
32pt Arial Bold and put line breaks around it."
I wish the direction would be one where the user could instruct the
Editor like this: "This string is a level one heading. The font of level
one headings is the user's favorite sans-serif font bolded and 200% the
size of the body font."
The user would have to understand the basic idea of structure+style but
the Editor would take care of producing the HTML and CSS code. The user
wouldn't need to know how a level one heading is marked up in HTML or
where to put semicolons in CSS.
> I want a HTML editor my father could use to write his book w/o
> learning the concepts of HTML, XML or CSS. My goal here is not
> yet-another-dreamweaver.
>
> > (If someone can recommend a real structural HTML editor for Mac that I
> > could recommend to my mother, I am listening. I've been hoping Mozilla
> > Editor could be that editor, but, sadly, Editor seems to be headed to
> > another direction.)
>
> No, that's exactly our direction. Of course, if your mother is a SGML
> guru, she needs something else.
I don't think a user operating with no clue about Web authoring and an
SGML guru are the only possible user profiles. I was thinking of users
who understand the big picture of structure+style and would like to
author real (adaptable, scalable, accessible) Web pages (as opposed to
imitating paper) but don't want to focus on the details of HTML and CSS
on the syntactic level.
Understanding the basic things doesn't mean the user would have to read
an entire book.
> > Previously, it has been argued that Editor should work like a word
> > processor.
>
> Is that assertion in my document ?...
No it wasn't. Earlier some suggestions were rejected in this ng on the
grouds of users expecting word-processor-like behavior. (Also, in other
contexts other people have argued that Mozilla isn't for end users. If
that were the case, assertions about end user not understanding a
particular authoring paradigm would be moot. :-)
> > What I meant with my remark about Word in my previous message was that
> > guessing block styles from styling applied to arbitrary selections (the
> > Automatically Update Styles feature in Word) leads to trouble. Using
> > the
> > style editor explicitly is easier and the results are predictable.
>
> You just forget that you and me are not average users. The style editor
> is far too complex for far too many people.
> Otherwise, I tend to agree with you.
The layout of Word's style editor is, in my opinion, suboptimal, but I
believe a style editor doesn't have to be a realm limited to advanced
users only. I think the situation where an application tries guess (more
or less arbitrarily) structure+style from font properties applied to
selections by the user is more confusing than presenting a real style
editor UI--more confusing to anyone and even more confusing to
non-advanced users.
--
Henri Sivonen
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.clinet.fi/~henris/
